Hackers shoplifted vouchers of Flipkart, Amazon leading to loss of over 92 lakh

Joint commissioner R P Upadhyay said the other three arrested in the case were Azad Choudhary, Tejveer Sheoran and Prakhar Aggarwal. Azad is a BTech student from Churu, Rajasthan. Prakhar is also a second-year BTech student from Dehradun while Tejveer, from Bhiwani in Haryana, is pursuing BCA at a Delhi University college.

"These crooks hacked into the payment gateway used by the website and manipulated details including source codes to execute their con job," said Ishwar Singh, DCP south.

The complainant had provided voluminous data on the crime procured from various e-merchant firms. These revealed that e-vouchers which were digitally shoplifted belonged to companies such as Make My Trip, Amazon, Flipkart, Big Bazar, Reliance Digital, Myntra.com, Yatra.com, Dominos, Prestige, Titan, Provogue, Shoppers Stop and other online shopping firms.

The total financial loss to the complainant was assessed at over 92 lakh. The team needed to ascertain the identity and location of the entity which was behind the crime.

A senior cop explained how the hackers committed their crimes. "While making an online purchase, a customer enters his or her debit/credit card details and clicks on the 'make payment' icon. At this point, this message often flashes on the screen: 'Your payment is being processed; please do not refresh or press the back button'. The hackers would, at this stage, press cancel or the back page icon, and save the source codes. The parameters were then edited on a 'jammed' webpage," said a senior cop.

The order would then be placed by transferring money from an online e-wallet opened by the hacker using a fictitious or proxy identity.